As far as decades go, the 1970s were a pretty miserable time for the United States. From the country’s humiliating exit from Viet Nam through the Watergate scandal and OPEC embargo, to stagflation, economic “malaise,” disco, leisure suits, and the Iranian hostage crisis, the years between 1970 and 1979 were, on the whole, rather depressing. Even America’s national pastime suffered embarassment and disgrace.

Given the zeitgeist of the seventies, it’s probably no coincidence that the disastrous decade coincided with the golden age of the disaster film. Movies about the masses facing impending doom ruled at the box office. Just a quick survey of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) turns up more than two dozen such films from award-winning box-office successes like Earthquake (1974), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and The Towering Inferno (1974), to less well-known yarns The Cassandra Crossing (1976), City on Fire (1979), made-for TV “thrillers” Heat Wave! (1974), The Day the Earth Moved (1974), Flood! (1976), and one infamous “B-movie” flop.

Among the many disaster films that graced the silver screen, movies about airplanes were particularly prominent. Much of the reason had to with the immense success of the decade’s first smash hit, Airport (1970) which pulled in a then whopping $45 million in receipts. Airport’s success led to a string of lesser sequels: Airport 1975, Airport ‘77, and the abysmal The Concorde: Airport 1979. By decade’s end, airplane disaster flicks had become so familiar that they invited parody in the smash 1980 spoof Airplane!

Ironically, just as Hollywood studios began to subject airplane disaster films to ridicule, Soviet film makers took their first stab at the sub-genre. The fruit of their labor was Air Crew (Экипаж) — a 1979 Mosfil’m production released the following year.

[Spoiler Alert!]

Air Crew focuses on the personal lives of three pilots serving aboard an Aeroflot Tu-154. When not ferrying passengers to destinations around the globe, the crew provides service to their country by flying relief missions to regions beset by floods and other natural disasters.

The film’s first half is a bit slow going. Just over one hour of the 1hr 45 min film is devoted to developing the characters of its three main protagonists.

Andrei Timchenko (played by Georgi Zhzhyonov) is the senor pilot of the ekipazh. An veteran airman and who first earned his wings flying for the Red Air Force, he is calm, disciplined, and resolute. He is the very incarnation of an ideal Soviet flier.

Although he is well into the years of his middle age, Timchenko has no difficulty passing the physical exam required for the demanding task of piloting Aeroflot planes. Indeed, he enjoys remarkable health. Still, he is a realist. He is aware that, inevitably, he too, will lose his wings thanks to inexorable march of time. When a considerably younger colleague is forced into retirement by the state medical board, Timchenko sympathizes with his comrade, noting with sadness and sincerity that “Today it’s you, tomorrow me.”

Following his return from his most recent international flight, Timchenko’s apparently idyllic personal life is thrown into tumult. The pilot learns that his teenage daughter has become pregnant. Angered by this turn of events, he confronts the dishonorable young man responsible for the deed only to learn that it is his daughter and not the boy who refuses to marry.

Valentin Nenarokov (Anatolii Vasilyev) is the air crew’s co-pilot. He is a dedicated airman whose first love is flying. His life-long goal is to earn promotion to lead pilot aboard a Tu-154 — the USSR’s most advanced passenger aircraft. As is true of his colleague Timchenko, Nenarokov is having trouble at home. The long hours that he logs flying for the Soviet national airline are taking their toll on his family life. Already discontent for having married too young and jealous of her husband’s high-flying freedom, Nenarokov’s wife Alevtina (Irina Akulova) resents bearing the burden of raising their young son. She bristles at the attention the boy gives his father when the pilot returns home from abroad. Increasingly, she directs her anger toward the boy. The couple’s martial tensions come to a head when Alevtina demands a divorce. Believing that he will be granted custody of their son, Nenarokov agrees. To his dismay, the court awards the boy to Alevtina.

The aircrew’s final member is flight engineer Igor Skvortsov (played by Leonid Filatov). Skvortsov bears all the trappings of a modern-day Don Juan. He is a jet-setting playboy who uses his glamorous career (and access to high-tech foreign consumer goods) to seduce and bed as many women as possible. As the film begins, he has recently met (and quickly conquers) the young and pretty stewardess Tamara (Aleksandra Yakovleva-Aasmyae) who serves aboard his aircraft. Tamara is aware of Skvortsov’s amorous past. Still, she falls hard for the aviator. She believes that she can win his heart and begs him not toss her aside like his earlier women. Skvortsov is taken by the stewardess. He, too, has fallen in love. By all appearances, Tamara’s affections have convinced Skvortsov that it is time to settle down.

The budding relationship between Skvortsov and Tamara is thrown into turmoil when a former girlfriend shows up unexpectedly at the flier’s apartment. Although Skvortsov only reluctantly allows her in (and fends off her comely advances), he is busted when Tamara arrives. The stewardess is crushed. Believing that her love has betrayed her, Tamara announces that their relationship is finished. Skvortsov’s subsequent attempts to win her back by proposing marriage…fail.

With their personal lives having reached states of crisis, the members of the air crew are summoned to fly a dangerous relief mission. An earthquake has struck the (fictional) city of Bidri located somewhere high in the mountains. Dozens of gravely injured citizens must be evacuated even as aftershocks, sporadic fires, and chaos continue to threaten the beleaguered metropolis.

Timchenko and crew fly through treacherous mountain passes in stormy weather to land at the city’s airport. They begin overseeing the boarding of wounded citizens.

As the aircraft sits on the runway tarmac a new series of tremors strike Bidri. Collapsing buildings and falling debris add scores more to the mounting number of victims. Weakened by the seismic activity, a nearby dam — located in the mountains above (!) the city — gives way sending a wall of water into the metropolis below. As the flood engulfs city and citizens, it knocks out the local electric plant and severely damages the oil refinery. The refinery ignites! The scourge of fire is added to the living Hell facing Bidri’s masses!

Amid continuing temblors and a rapidly raging conflagration, Timchenko and his crew must act. They must attempt a perilous take-off from the mountain runway or face certain death in a Holocaust of Biblical proportions…

By all appearances, Air Crew looks very much like an Soviet rip-off of contemporary American disaster films. It’s a predictable, initially slow-moving joint that combines treacly melodrama with over-the-top action and lots of marginal special effects. As such, its not surprising that Americans’ reviews and commentary on the film are largely dismissive.

I think Air Crew deserves a closer look.

While there can be little doubt that director Aleksandr Mitta hoped to score a hit by adapting the decade-long success of foreign disaster films for Soviet audiences, it is a mistake to see Air Crew as simply a knock-off of the Hollywood genre. The film is very much indebted to the longstanding domestic tradition of the Soviet aviation film. Particularly important, in this regard, are Stalinist-era productions like 1938’s Victory (Победа) (in which an air crew must contend with a raging typhoon) and 1939’s Air Mail (Воздушная почта) (in which a young female pilot must brave a howling blizzard to bring medical supplies to an isolated Siberian village). Subscribing to the conventions of the officially sanctioned style “socialist realism,” such films (as well as countless novels, short stories, and plays) depicted stalwart Soviet citizens demonstrating their heroism by overcoming and subduing the elemental forces of nature. Although not technically “disaster films,” productions like Air Mail and Victory are clear precursors of Mitta’s depiction of an embattled air crew.

Air Crew’s air crew exceeds beyond even the wildest dreams of the Stalinist 1930s. In the course of the film’s final forty minutes, they overcome all four elements: earth, water, fire, and air in rescuing their charges and saving the day. Moreover, they do so in impeccably socialist fashion: working as a collective (kollektiv) in the accomplishment of a single task. Each man proves indispensable to the mission as Timchenko expertly pilots the craft out of the quaking city (seconds before the runway is engulfed in a torrent of fire) and both Nenarokov and Skvortsov risk their own lives (and suffer severe frostbite) by completing repairs to the airplane’s damaged tail while in flight.

Notwithstanding Air Crew’s clear ties to socialist realist conventions of the 1930s, the film is also not simply a re-tread of hackneyed Stalinist formulas. In many ways, the film was a path-breaking production. Aside from beginning christened as the “first” Soviet disaster flick, Air Crew was the first Soviet film to be produced using funds other than those provided by the state. It was also the first Soviet film to contain overtly erotic content. In an early scene, set in Skvortsov’s bachelor pad, Tamara’s exposed breasts are shown on-camera. By contemporary Hollywood standards (Pretty Baby, anyone?) this was pretty tame stuff. By Brezhnev-era standards, on-screen nudity was downright avant-garde. [In fact, most of the footage involving Skvortsov and Tamara’s coupling was excised by state censors.]¹

Still more revolutionary than glimpses of Tamara’s boobs was the film’s effort to address some of the pressing social issues that troubled Soviet citizens during the “Period of Stagnation.” Timchenko’s conversations with his daughter regarding the fate of her unborn child clearly allude to the widespread practice of abortion; Nenarokov’s domestic disarray speaks to the epidemic of divorce while the relationship between Skvortsotv and Tamara carries messages regarding the negative influence of Western culture and the break-down of officially sanctioned morals.

To be certain, all of these issues are touched on only ever so lightly and the tensions are ultimately resolved in a suitably correct fashion. The air crew saves the day, Timchenko’s daughter gives birth, Nenarokov becomes first pilot, and Skvortsov and Tamara get hitched before the film’s end. Despite its tidy ending, seemingly formulaic plot, and shlocky special effects, Air Crew was a remarkable film for its time. It is well worth viewing today.

Air Crew is available for purchase at RussianDVD.com and as a rental through Netflix.

1. ”Как снимал Экипаж,” Аргументы и факты, Но. 19 (49): 4 октября 2004 [↩]